A vehicle transmission having a continuously variable transmission ratio has been disclosed by U.S. application 60/999,964 belonging to the Applicant.
The transmission involves an “i2-red transmission,” wherein “i” indicates the transmission ratio of a variator of a continuously variable cone-pulley transmission and the “2” indicates that the variator transmission region is passed through twice.
This makes it possible to achieve a transmission having a large spread, which can transmit a high driving torque.
Although the above-described transmission has already proven successful, it has the disadvantage of a relatively complex construction, since it has a total of five clutches, of which one clutch is assigned to the reverse driving range, but four clutches alone are required in order to pass twice through the spread of the continuously variable cone-pulley transmission. Said clutches have to be correspondingly activated, which results in complicated switching operations. The four clutches are multi-disk clutches which each have to be activated by a dedicated actuating mechanism.
A transmission having a drive and output unit has also already been disclosed, in which an output gearwheel is arranged rotatably on a drive shaft via which an input torque can be introduced into the transmission. The output gearwheel is flanked on both sides by a clutch unit which has a multi-disk clutch and a dog clutch which can be brought alternately into engagement with the output gearwheel, thus enabling torque to be transmitted from the particular clutch unit to the output gearwheel. Even in the case of this known drive and output unit, the multi-disk clutches and dog clutches are each activated by an independent actuating mechanism. An activating means of this type is naturally complicated in terms of components and is therefore expensive.
Proceeding therefrom, the present invention is now based on the object of simplifying the vehicle transmission of the type in question in respect of the construction thereof and therefore also the activation of the individual transmission components which transmit rotational force.